Coulsdon

Friday 2 April

Over Easter, I was in "action" at Coulsdon, a nonedescript suburb in the southern-most part of London. There is a strange venue there which has a lot of chess tournaments - its an evangelical Church hall where the pastor is a big chess fan, so its a strange combination of a chess venue and a Church. There is, for example, a bit tapestry saying "Jesus is the King" but which has a picture of a chess King.

It is not a venue where I have ever done very well, but it does have the one significant virtue of being near my parents' house where I lived as a teenager, so I can go and visit them and get a free place to stay during the tournament.

On this occasion I headed South on the Thursday morning, worked in our Dunstable office, and then drove round the M25 to my parents' house. Friday was also my Sister's 40th birthday. I had made a 40th birthday book and got lots of her friends and family members to write contributions. On the way to my parents' house, I stopped at a pub and wrote my own entry and then handed it over to them to take to her. They were going up to stay at her place in Oxforshire to look after the children so that she and her husband could go away to a spa hotel.

I had dinner at their house, and we got a fairly early night. They were leaving at 6am to drive up to Oxfordshire. I headed off to the chess venue at 9.30. Unusually, there were no friends playing as well. Also, it turned out to be a very tiny tournament - there were only 23 boards in all three sections put together. I decided to regard it just as a good opportunity to get some practice.

Game 1 - Perfect Storm
All the things I don't like came together in one game for me. As you know, I always seem to do worse in the first round - my round 1 hoodoo. I also always play badly against young girls, and I had been drawn against a girl of about 12, albeit with a strong rating (better than mine). When you add in the fact that I've never done well at Coulsdon, the omens were not good for this game. And then to make matters worse she launched off with an opening I don't like, the Grand Prix Sicilian 1 e4 c5 2 Nc3 Nc6 3 f4 which is an aggressive opening I find hard to play against and have been considering using myself as White.

I was pleased with how the game turned out - I managed to find good defensive moves to counter her attack which also offered counter-attacking possibilities and gave her problems to answer herself. When under attack it's not good to get too stuck in a defensive mode, and the best way to respond is usually to try to find a counter attack to take advantage of the fact that they might have overpressed or opened up the position by attacking hard. In the end, after some scary moments, I was in fact slightly better owing to the fact that she had opened up her Kingside and it was she who had to close the centre and offer a draw, which I accepted.

I found a totally empty Thai restaurant with a lunchtime deal , and limited myself to sparkling
water with my Thai red vegetable curry.

Game 2 - Easy Win
Not much needs to be said about this. I was drawn against someone who played for the local Coulsdon club, who was rated only 39, and I ended up with a very easy win. At least I finished it off efficiently. Afterwards he asked me for a couple of friendly games so he could practice.

My friend Grete was coming down to Coulsdon to meet up with me, and I met her at the station. We went to the pub and I had a couple of alcohol-free beers whilst she told me about her new magazine project. She accompanied me back to the venue. She was going to sit and wait for a bit but I did point out that she might be waiting over three hours for the game to finish.

Game 3 - A rapid reverse
When there are three games in a day, I normally take the evening game as a bye, arguing that I don't like to play three times in one day. On this occasion, however, I had decided to try playing three times. This proved to be a mistake as I lost very fast - in only 9 moves. In fact this was my worst defeat probably since Bradford last September. It was rather unfortunate. The opening was a c3 Sicilian and I played my usual line against it. This has had some good results - including my draw vs Richard Desmedt at the local club last December - but I know that you can get into problems because of the open lines you give White. Anyway, this opponent misplayed the opening, giving up a pawn. I wondered if he had sacrificed the pawn on purpose (played a gambit) to gain open lines, but he told me afterwards that he had not. I took the pawn but quickly found myself in all kinds of trouble - losing a Rook in fact, so I resigned on move 9.

Having told Grete the game could take three hours, it was all over in 20 minutes! It did at least mean that she and I could have a bit more of a chat and get something to eat.

I took her to East Croydon station and headed back to my parents' place for an early night.

Saturday 3 April

Game 4 - In which I find a good tactic to save the game
There was already not much to play for in this tournament since I was on 1.5/3 after the previous day's reverse. This morning's game was against an older guy who has apparently been around on the circuit for many years and still plays in a lot of tournaments. The opening was quite a quiet 1 d4 (I was White) and we ended up in a Queen's Gambit Declined. In an interesting sequel to last night's game, I lost a pawn by a blunder, but it turned out that this game me some open lines to attack along in compensation, so I had some opportunities. I managed to get my Rook up the board - I was convinced that there had to be a tactic that would be good for me, and eventually it proved that that instinct was right - after much searching I found a way to win back the pawn. After that the game was about equal; most of the pieces were gone and we were in a level endgame. After we agreed a draw, the bloke on the next board commented that I had been ahead because my Rook was strong and his Queenside Rook and Bishop were undeveloped, but I pointed out that to set against that I had a weak back rank, and the moves I would need to invest to sort that out would allow him to develop his Queenside.

We went through the game afterwards in an upstairs room with a friend of his. Then Russell Goodfellow turned up. He wasn't playing owing to the small size of the event and the hard section limits, but came along for a beer and to collect the duty-free tequila I'd got him. We had a couple of pints and a chat in the local pub.

Game 5 - I have to dig deep to survive
Possibly because of the beer, or possibly because it was a dead last-round game, I played the opening fairly loose and soon found myself in a bit of a pickle against a solid middle-ranking player. In fact I thought I had lost a piece on move 11 and was looking at another very early resignation, but I decided to mix things up and give him a few problems to solve, and as ever this helped to confuse things. At our level players can often get confused by complications, and I managed to escape from the mess losing only a pawn. When I later looked at the game in the computer it confirmed that he had indeed been winning a full piece, so I'm glad that I managed to fight my way out.

In fact I came back to a position where I was level or even ahead in the subsequent end-game - I was a pawn down but with a superior pawn structure. The game dragged on and on. Eventually I did make a mistake and exchanged the last pair of pawns into a lost ending, where my King was stuck on the edge and his King was closer to his remaining pawn, so eventually I lost on move 63, but it was a pretty good effort considering I was staring defeat in the face on move 11. At least I manage to keep fighting on more often these days in positions I used to resign. Make the buggers work for it.

I ended up with a very average 2/5, but I don't feel that I played all that badly - both draws were good hard efforts, one defeat was just a nasty opening and the other was a long hard-fought battle.

I headed back to my parents' place where we had dinner with my Aunt and Uncle. The next day, I headed to my Aunt and Uncle's house, met some of their family including cousins I've not seen in a long time, and then I drove to Reading to see Colin. He is in the throes of a "living on £5 a day campaign", a valiant effort at frugal living, so instead of going out for dinner he cooked us a nice meal, and we sat and went through all my Coulsdon games - as ever, he had plenty of insights to offer. Then we played some "knock-down" blitz games, at which he had a considerable advantage as the evening wore on, since I was drinking wine and he was on the water!

On the Monday I drove back to Leicester where I stayed with Mark Ward, whom I've not seen for ages. He gave me a round 2-0 thrashing at Risk and we had a curry. I stayed overnight at his house and returned home on Tuesday.

Tomorrow I will be heading back down south again for yet another tournament at St Albans. I've not played in this one before, though I did spectate two years ago. I'm hoping to get the fortune that eluded me at Coulsdon, and also to be able to learn the lessons of my recent defeats. Report to follow, as ever.